1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic voting systems and, more specifically, to networked interactive online devices and methods for facilitating elections through the use of computer network systems, such as the Internet. Examples of elections that may make use of these systems include local, state, and national elections, as well as any other voting decision, such as a corporate election of a board of directors or decisions being made by a local homeowner's association.
2. Description of the Related Art
The year 2000 Presidential election highlighted many deficiencies in voting practices of the United States. One area that displayed the need for improvement was the support for enfranchisement of overseas citizens as mandated by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA). Many citizens within this category of voters are either in the military or with the State Department and, consequently, the Presidential designee for carrying out the Federal provisions is the Secretary of Defense. The Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP), under the Department of Defense (DOD), administers the Act and seeks to achieve maximum access to the polls for these citizens.
The FVAP recently conducted a pilot program, called Voting Over the Internet (VOI), in an attempt to increase access to the polls for overseas citizens. The pilot program was considered a success; however, several factors indicated that the approach used in the pilot program was not suited for widespread implementation. The June 2001 Assessment Report on the VOI project describes the architecture of the system to provide this service, and makes recommendations for further improvement. The document proposes two alternatives to the previous VOI project that will solve many of the problems identified by the FVAP and provide a much improved process for meeting the requirements of UOCAVA.
Overseas voters presently use a two-step mailing process where information is transferred between the voter and the governing jurisdiction. The governing jurisdiction is the entity conducting the election for which the voter is seeking participation. The governing jurisdiction is typically a county, but can be a State level and is hereafter referred to as the Local Election Office (LEO). The first mailing amounts to the voter requesting an absentee ballot overseas and first form is sent into the LEO sometime prior to the election and typically has a cut-off date for requests. The request for a ballot is acknowledged by the LEO by return mail. At this point, the voter is approved to receive an absentee ballot when such ballots are available.
Absentee mail-in ballots that are in use today are created using either punchcard or marksense technology, both of which require an offset printing process to produce printed ballots. This fact has a significant impact on the availability of election ballots and directly effects the voting cycle of an Overseas Voter (OSV). The contests and races for an election go through several approval and review cycles leading up to an election. The end result is that the ballot becomes “certified” with as little as 45 days prior to the election date. Once certified, the ballot may be printed and barring any problems in the printing process, will require two weeks to deliver to the printer and receive printed ballots. This leaves 30 days to mail the ballot to the voter and for the voter to return the ballot to LEO. With mailing cycles for overseas mail ranging from 10-25 days, to likelihood of the voter returning his or her ballot by the date of the election is small. This problem is a significant obstacle that often foils the objectives of the FVAP.
The 2001 Assessment Report on the VOI project produced by the FVAP identifies many concerns with the Pilot Project and future implementations. Other notable reviews of the prospect of Internet Voting have echoed many of these same concerns including Viruses and Trojan Horses, denial of Service for Internet Voting Services, integration with a Local Election Office's (LEO's) Registration Services, integration with a Local Election Office's (LEO's) Ballot Definition/Creation Systems, and integration with a Local Election Office's (LEO's) Ballot Tabulation System.
In principal, any general-purpose computer may harbor malicious viruses or Trojan horses on its hard drive or within any of its programs or operating system components that are designed to interfere with an Internet Voting System. Internet Voting using Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) encryption and digital signatures for security does not solve this problem, and the several studies of Internet Voting conclude that this problem is the most difficult barrier to large scale Internet Voting. The Virus and Trojan horse issue is generally related to the voter's computer workstation which represents the single greatest risk to any Internet voting system. The voter's workstation is a complete unknown due to a wide variety of system implementations that are in existence. Any voting solution that requires computational processing involving the host workstation's memory needs to bring a measure of control and assurance that any executed process operates as intended.
With the open nature of the Internet, any service that is based on servers connected to the Internet at large is open to attacks that will flood these servers with traffic that may effectively deny service to valid users. While this is less of a problem for services that are not time-sensitive, such as election day voting, it remains a problem that is not solved by the present FVAP VOI structure or many other proposed Internet Voting systems. Recent well-publicized attacks of large commercial Internet companies shows how even a single young hacker can implement a successful Denial of Service attack.
Local states and counties have differing laws and procedures covering voter registration. While the present VOI project allowed remote voter registration, the process was not well integrated into the counties practices and systems, and this lack of integration will be a problem for any large-scale implementation of overseas voting through the FVAP.
The ballot for a particular election in a jurisdiction may include literally hundreds of different ballot styles, and the different ballot styles must be exactly aligned to the districts and precinct assignments that create the differing ballot styles. In addition, different jurisdictions may have specific laws or practices that concern the presentation of the ballot, so a single ballot format will not be applicable to all jurisdictions. Therefore, the integration of the LEO's ballot definition system with the FVAP VOI system is paramount to reducing the potential errors in presenting the ballots correctly.
In general, the actual tabulation or tallying of votes for absentee voting of any kind must be done at the LEO at a time and in the manner the LEO requires. While certain types of pre-processing of returned ballot data may be done more freely, the actual tabulation is governed by very rigid laws, which are meant to reduce the possibility of fraud or error in tabulation. Therefore, any internet voting system needs to include the ability to do the actual tabulation of individual ballots at the LEO, and the output of this tabulation needs to be properly integrated into the LEOs tabulation system.
To improve the present UOCAVA process performance, the primary parameter of the process that needs improvement is speed. The whole process needs to speed up to shorten the cycle time. This will increase the likelihood that an OSV will be able to return his or her ballot within the allowed time period, in order to avoid is the number one factor for disenfranchising overseas voters. Areas for improvement are first, the transport of information between the LEOs and the voters, and secondly, the amount of time required at the LEOs for information processing between transport cycles.
For the present UOCAVA process, there are two mailing cycles, one for registration and the other for balloting. The balloting mail cycle occurs within a restricted time period, between the time the ballot is certified and election day. A mailing cycle consists of two legs; an outbound leg and inbound from the LEO. Any opportunity to improve this part of the process would be to shorten the mailing cycle or to eliminate cycles completely. To shorten a mailing cycle, it is conceivable to go to shorter mailing cycles by paying a higher postage rate using the USPS or a private freight service. This would immediately multiply the cost of mailing by a factor of ten (10), making an already expensive program much worse. The other problem is that this would not guarantee delivery as certain military or State department situations would interrupt the responsibility of the carrier.
The other possibility is to eliminate complete mailing cycles or legs. Elimination of a cycle or leg can be accomplished through the use of electronic formats, which is exactly the premise of an Internet voting system. However, as previously noted, a pure Internet approach is not acceptable unless specific security concerns are resolved.
There are two legs to each cycle and the outbound legs is essentially used to deliver a form to the OSV, whether it is an absentee ballot request or a ballot. In either case, at the completion of the outbound leg, the OSV ends up with a pre-printed form which must be completed and sent by return mail for the inbound leg of the mailing cycle. It is the outbound leg of each mailing cycle that can be replaced with an electronic delivery of the pre-printed form and maintain the security and integrity of election process.
Elections are a fundamental process by which governments decide who will govern, whether the general public will accept new legislation, whether constitutions will be amended, and other matters of high importance. Voters formerly wrote down their choices on a ballot and anonymously cast the ballot in a ballot box. The ballot was later retrieved and counted along with other cast ballots. This process embodied numerous problems. The process of counting votes to decide ballot issues was time consuming. In close elections, uncertainty over the correctness of the counts often required time consuming recounts in close elections. A single voter could sometimes cast numerous ballots because there was no comprehensive system to check for voter eligibility.
Election procedures have substantially changed in modern times. Modern elections are performed on a large scale with the aid of computerized systems. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,758,325 to Lohry et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,278,753 to Graft et al. show distributed hierarchical systems including a headquarters unit that oversees or governs the operations of multiple precinct units. In turn, the precinct units oversee or govern the operations of numerous voting booths. In both systems, data is transported between the headquarters unit and the precinct unit using a nonvolatile memory cartridge. This memory cartridge may include a CD ROM, EPROM, or other form of nonvolatile memory. Thus, communications that are transmitted by electronic signals between the precinct unit and the headquarters unit may later be confirmed after the precinct election data is delivered by hand to the headquarters. Security algorithms at headquarters verify that the nonvolatile memory module is authentic. This system prevents election tampering by the intercept of electronic signals.
A significant problem affecting democratic elections is low voter turnout. Many potential voters do not bother to register and, consequently, cannot vote. Other voters who are registered do not take the time to vote. This problem is related to the difficulty of voting because voters must often occupy several hours to travel to a precinct voting station, wait in line and vote. This problem occurs even when computerized voting systems are used.
One solution to low voter turnout is to provide easier access enabling more voters to participate in elections. This could be done using extant computer networks, e.g., the Internet, with appropriate security precautions in place. Nevertheless, use of non-dedicated or general-purpose computer networks has heretofore been impracticable because these networks are insecure. For example, a skilled programmer could assemble a computer virus that would disrupt a national election either by causing the system to crash or by transmitting false results. Trojan horse programs can be created appearing to provide some useful service, but actually executing unexpected and unwanted functions, and these programs can be distributed to reside on many hard drives. Absent authentication of ballot information, a possibility also exists that election fraud might be perpetrated by the use of software to generate ballots favoring one candidate over another.
There remains a need to provide a secure voting system that can be accessed over a network and, particularly, a general purpose or non-dedicated computer network.